An Ideal Valentines Day?
by Queen-KateoftheCastle
Summary: Castle has plans for Valentine day, but Kate forgot she agreed to babysit for her cousin. How much could go wrong?


**I know I simply haven't written in ages, but I have been super duper busy, and I do promise I will start writing "A Summer Of Change" again soon.**

**This is just a cute little one shot I wanted to write for Valentines day, nothing too heavy, I hope you all like it:) Please read and review! So here it is...**

**Disclaimer: Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, These are simple gardening facts! And on a side note, I, sadly, do not own Castle.**

* * *

Beckett and Castle stood making coffee in the break room and reflecting on the latest case. They had been investigating for over 2 weeks, and finally just yesterday caught the bastard- now Beckett had to give the DA a recommendation. She was so tired from such a heavy work load, and Castle felt sorry for her.

"Beckett? Honey? I was thinking that since you have been so stressed lately, what with the case and everything...well, maybe, tomorrow I could take you out for dinner, and then we could see a movie or something. You know it is Valentines day tomorrow" Castle said his piece to Beckett, and she looked up with a faraway look in her eyes  
"That sounds great Castle, but I forgot to tell you, I agreed with my cousin that you and I would babysit her kids tomorrow night- I am so sorry Castle, I completely forgot that it was Valentines day!"  
Castle looked Crestfallen, but then looked up at her, with a new plan formulating in his mind.  
"Thats ok, we can babysit the kids, once they're in bed, we can make a romantic dinner together, and snuggle up in front of a movie, then ignore the movie, and create our own love story" Castle told Beckett excitedly.  
Beckett smiled at him and planted a kiss on his cheek  
"that sounds perfect" she responded

* * *

Later Esposito and Castle were filing away the evidence from this case.  
"So bro, where are you taking Beckett for Valentines day?" Espo questioned Castle.  
"Uh, we are just going to have a quiet evening, babysit her cousins kids" Castle said, and Espo smirked.  
"dude that is so unromantic...you know what I'm doing with Lanie? We are going out for dinner, then seeing some broadway show that she loves"  
Castle looked defendant, and was about to retort with a sarcastic remark about how Espo hated broadway shows, but with his better judgement, he decided against it, and kept quiet.

* * *

The next night Beckett and Castle got home to Castle's loft and collapsed on the sofa.  
"Its been a while since I have seen my cousin's kids, but they were pretty angelic last time I saw them, so they should be ok now, I am honestly too tired to deal with anything more that angelic" Beckett told Castle, and Castle smiled back at Beckett and brushed his fingers through her silky hair.  
"Castle, no...If we settle down like this, we will never get up again to get ready for the triplets" Beckett said almost falling asleep.  
"Triplets?" Castle jumped off the sofa, in exclamation, bumping Beckett's head off his lap in the hurry.  
"Yea, Castle. Sorry did I not tell you? Identical Triplets, but don't stress they're really well behaved" Beckett responded a little more awake now.  
"Identical Triplets are like, predisposed to be little devils, its triple trouble!" Castle raved, but Beckett silenced him with her famous look. She then got up and walked over to the kitchen table, she left her phone, her badge, her gun and her handcuffs on the bench and started to make some pasta, for when the triplets got there.

* * *

It was half an hour later when the door bell chimed, and Castle had just finished madly running around, trying to child-proof the whole loft, but now he stopped running, and looked at the door, terrified. Beckett walked in front of him and opened up the door.  
"Hi!" she exclaimed, and leaned in to give a women that looked like she could never be related to, a hug.  
This women was short and fat, with peroxide blonde hair and way to much makeup. With her she had three little boys dressed in matching flannelette shirts and shorts, standing quietly.  
"Hi Katie" this women said with a southern drawl "Its been a long time since I saw you last".  
"Wow, yeah, it has. This is my fiancé Rick" Beckett pulled Castle out from hiding behind her, where he had been glaring at the triplets  
"and Rick, this is my cousin, Marlene" Castle and Marlene shook hands awkwardly, Marlene clearly not recognising the famous author, probably due to her lack of reading.  
"Gosh, hi boys, how old are you guys now" Kate said leaning down, and then she whispered to Marlene"and which one is which?"  
Marlene giggled "this is Bobby, this is Max, and this is Phil, and they are 5 now"  
"So you're going out with Tim tonight?" Kate asked Marlene, ignoring the glowering looks she was receiving from the boys- both the triplets and Castle  
"Yeah, he is taking me to this fancy place, I think its called Nobu?"  
"well, you better get going, see you round midnight?" Kate asked, and Marlene nodded exiting the Loft, and taking the elevator down.

Once Marlene had gone, Kate led the Triplets to the table and sat them down, she then went and got the pasta she had prepared earlier and dished out five bowls. They started to eat, but after about five minuets of silence the boys started kicking each other under the table.  
"Ow! Bobby kicked me" accused Phil with a glare.  
"Boys, don't kick each other" Castle reprimanded, used to childish behaviour, from when Alexis was younger.  
Everyone ate in silence again, until they had finished and Kate collected up the dirty bowls.  
"We want dessert" said Max  
"Sorry Max, we don't have any ice-cream left" Beckett responded  
Max looked angry, and all of a sudden, all 3 triplets were banging their hands on the table, chanting "We want ice-cream". Beckett looked at Castle with a desperate look, and Castle glared back and mouthed the words "predisposed devils. Beckett turned her back on him and tried to distract the Bobby, Max and Phil.  
"So do you boys like Pirates?" she said in a lame attempt to interest them, but it had worked, all 3 boys eyed her with hesitant interest.  
"How about I put on Peter Pan? That has pirates in it?" Beckett continued on. The triplets nodded eagerly, so she sat them down on the couch with some cookies and milk, and put the DVD on.  
After a while Castle and Beckett relaxed, the boys had settled down, and now were sleeping, with the movie still going on in the background. Castle motioned to the study, and Beckett followed him.  
"I'm glad they're asleep now, so you and I can have our valentines day to ourselves" Castle whispered in Beckett's ear, as the two embraced in a long hug. Beckett nodded, and cuddled him back. The two sat on the couch in his office, and started to kiss passionately. They were now lying on the couch, still kissing, with things getting a little more intense when they heard an "EWWWWW" coming from the door to the office, which they had left open.  
The Triplets were standing there watching them exclaiming things about how gross kissing was. Beckett and Castle jumped apart and stood up, standing there like two teenagers who had been caught kissing behind the bike sheds.  
"Scuse me Kate?" Phil asked Kate earnestly, "but your shirt is undone, and I can see your bra"  
Everyone looked at Beckett's bra, and Castle smiled dreamily, while Beckett scrambled to do up the buttons.  
"Thank you for that Phil, now what do you boys want to do?" Beckett asked them?  
"We want to play a game!" All 3 shouted in response  
"How about a game of make-believe dinosaurs, you be the t-rex's and we be the cave people?" Castle pipped up.  
"Thats lammmmmeeeeeee" Bobby retorted, and went to sit on the couch in the study, the others followed, and the three were pretty soon engaged in a pillow fight using the cushions off the couch.  
"uhhhhh, what about a game of pirates? you guys love pirates right? we could all be pirates and get ship wrecked?" Beckett asked rather desperately, but her idea fell on deaf ears, the boys were making such a commotion.  
The boys were now leaping on and off the couch throwing the cushions in all directions. Castle suddenly had an idea and stepped into the middle of the room, a cushion just missing his head.  
"Boys how would you like to make a blanket fort? You can sleep in it once its made, and you can even have snacks in there!" Castle was really trying to sell his idea to the little pre disposed devils, and after exchanging glances with each other, all three boys agreed to give it a go.  
"Right then, we will need blankets, chairs, and rope to tie the blankets around the chairs with. Beckett, why don't you get the rope from the front hall closet, and we boys will get the blankets" Castle told her "also I think I have an old toy box of Alexis' in the closet, could you get that too?". She nodded and gave him a grateful look, then walked away, thinking about the mischief they would get up to later. In the front hall closet she found the light, and had a look around for some rope. Castle was so good with kids, she hopped one day they might have kids together, she just wasn't sure how she would go with two kids-Castle and a baby. Eventually she found some lengths of rope and the toy box and walked back to where Castle had the three boys standing in a line, and he was lecturing them.  
"We do not throw chairs at people boys!" Castle said while rubbing his shins. "If you do that when you are grown up, the police will arrest you and you go to jail". The boys looked unfazed, but Beckett came and sat on the couch adding to Castles lecture.  
"I am a police officer , and I meet people all the time, who do things like throw chairs, and I get them in lots of trouble".  
"Seriously? That is so cool! You're a police officer?" All three boys said at once  
"What do you do?" Max asked  
"Well, we catch people who do bad things, and we arrest them, then we ask them lots of questions about what they did, then they go to jail" Beckett told the three youngsters, who were entranced by the idea of a police officer.  
"Tell you what, why don't we play a game of police officers" Castle asked the triplets.  
"YEAHHHHH!" the Triplets deafeningly screamed.  
"You guys be the baddies, and we will the the cops" Bobby told Beckett and Castle. Castle nodded and him and Beckett raced to hide behind the couch from the finally co-operative triplets.  
"Men! We must find those people who threw those chairs at the other people" said Phil, trying to stay in character, and receiving business like nods from Bobby and Max. The boys stomped around for a few more minutes not seeing Beckett and Castle in their hiding spots. Eventually the Triplets got bored of looking, and started to misbehave again. Bobby climbed on top of table, where Beckett had left her things from work, as well as a pile of wedding magazines. Bobby pushed them all on to the floor, where everything spread out in every direction. While this was going on, Max and Phil, started to chase each other around the table screaming like lunatics. Beckett and Castle immediately came out of their hiding spot, and tried to calm the boys down.  
"Boys, its bedtime" Castle told them, but all three triplets continued on with their shenanigans.  
Bobby, who had now hopped off the table, raced past Kate almost running into her, while at the same time Castle tried to catch him from behind, but he wriggled free and continued running.  
Castle looked around for inspiration, and walked over to Alexis' old toy box, where he started rummaging.  
"Castle, what are you doing?" asked Beckett in a voice that indicated that she was close to breaking point.  
"I'm looking for a toy that might distract them in Alexis' old things, but all I can find is Super Sparkle Barbie and her magical rainbow pony friends!" Castle responded with his head half buried in toys.  
Having turned their attention away from the boys for a minute, Castle and Beckett looked up to see Max running around wielding Beckett's gun, she had left on the table...luckily the safety switch was on, but it was essential that Kate got ahold of the gun, before bullets started flying.  
"MAX! Give that to me right now!" Beckett shouted as she chased him all over the apartment. They went around the table, through the kitchen, over the couch, and in and out of the office on their mad chase.  
While this was going on, Phil had somehow managed to find some of Beckett's make up, and he was now squishing it into the pristine walls with his hands. When Castle turned around and noticed this, he almost had a heart attack. He raced towards Phil, and took the makeup away, he looked at the smushed up, bright red lipstick that was adorning the cream walls, and realised that he would have to clean it off now, before it stained. He looked over at Beckett, and decided that she would be fine to watch the chaotic children for a minute, while he got cleaning things from the front cupboard.  
Beckett, who had finally gotten her gun off Max, picked him up, and sat him on the couch.  
"You stay here" she instructed Max.  
Beckett then ran over and grabbed Phil from the floor, where he seemed to be trying to reach for the make up on the table, that she had just seen Castle take away. She took Phil over the couch, and then went searching for Bobby. In all this commotion, Bobby had gone off to hide, and Beckett had no idea, where he, or Castle for that matter had gone. She figured Castle had probably gone to the hallway closet to get something, so she took Phil in one hand and Max in the other, and went to go get Castle.  
Outside the hallway, she let go of the boys hands, and pulled open the door to the closet. Castle was in there hurriedly gathering cleaning supplies.  
"Castle, can you come out here and help me please?" she asked him, while at the same time delivering one of her glares to the two boys who had started a burping contest in the 2 seconds that she turned away.  
Castle gathered all the things he needed and both Beckett and Castle stood in the doorway of the closet, looking around for where Bobby had gone.  
Suddenly, Bobby came barreling down the hallway at top speed, and with all his might ran into Castle and Beckett, pushing them into the tiny storage closet. Before either of them had a chance to react, Bobby pushed the door closed on them, and reached to the lock and turned the key.  
Beckett and Castle looked to each other in dismay, and Castle dropped all his cleaning supplies. Outside of the closet, they could hear all three triplets laughing hysterically.  
"Boys, open the door now!" Castle said while trying to remain cool, but not succeeding very well.  
"Do you want me to tell Mummy what you are doing?" Beckett asked them through the door.  
But the only thing that they both received as a response was hysterical laughter.  
After a bit of begging and shouting on Castle and Beckett's behalf, the laughter eventually died down and they heard the triplets walk away from the closet.  
"Well this is just great! Just the romantic valentines day we had planned" Castle said in exasperation.  
"I am so sorry, I thought we would just put them to bed on the couch, and have the night to ourselves" Beckett responded.  
Castle gave a half-hearted smile, and shoved all the junk on the floor aside, to make room for them both to sit squished side by side. Castle took Beckett's hand, and squeezed it.  
"Don't worry, Marlene will be back soon enough, and then she can unlock the door".  
Beckett laughed "Thats what I love about you, you always have a silver lining for every occasion".  
"Always" he told her, in that deep sexy voice of his, that made her go weak at the knees. She smiled and leaned into him, resting her head in his chest, and breathing in his Cologne. He kissed the top of her head, the two of them in sweet oblivion to what was going on outside.

* * *

Once the triplets had gotten bored of waiting outside the door, they had wandered into the kitchen, where they decided to make themselves cake, seeing there had been no dessert. Bobby dragged up a chair and turned the stove on to a high setting, and grabbed a dirty pan from the sink. He placed it on the flame and started adding bread into the pan, which he found on the bench. Max found some chocolate in the fridge, and gave it to Bobby to put in the pan. Phil looked through the pantry and found some marshmallows to put it. Bobby mixed all these things in and hopped down from his chair declaring  
"ok, now we have to let it cook for a bit". Max who had been opening and shutting the fridge door, opened it and took out some Tomato Ketchup. He opened the nozzle and started to squirt the goopey sauce at Phil and Bobby, who laughed hysterically, and ran over to the couch. Max followed the two and squirted them again leaving ketchup all over Bobby, Phil, the couch and the floor.  
Bobby, who wanted a turn at squirting the ketchup bottle snatched it off Max, and ran all over the loft with it, managing to get it all over the floor and walls. Eventually the bottle ran out, and Phil pouted, because he didn't get a turn. Suddenly the Triplets heard a beeping noise, they looked up, and discovered the source of the beeping noise-a smoke alarm. Their concoction of bread, chocolate and marshmallows, had started to burn badly, and was sending up a thick grey smoke.  
The boys looked at the kitchen and laughed some more, then ran off to play elsewhere.

* * *

Inside the storage cupboard Beckett and Castle had fallen asleep on top of one another, but were harshly woken by the violent beeping of the smoke detector.  
"Thats the smoke detector Castle! wake up!" Beckett said, the last of the sleepiness fading away.  
"Crap!" castle said, and both of them scrambled to their feet, and started knocking on the door.  
"Boys, come on, jokes over, time to let us out" Beckett shouted through the door, trying to not panic.  
Castle, looking desperately around for a way out, remembered that he had lock pick tools in this cupboard somewhere, from his Derrick Storm days. He started to search through a box next to him, while Beckett continued to ask the boys to open it.  
All of a sudden the small iridescent globe that lit the cupboard blew out, preventing Castle from looking any further for his lock picking tools.  
"Castle? What are we going to do?" Beckett said seriously panicking  
"Only one thing to do, we make as much noise as possible, so the neighbours hear us over the smoke alarm, and come let us out." Castle said.  
Beckett nodded "but I don't think we have a lot of time, I can smell burning things, so we better hurry".  
Beckett and Castle knocked on the door, and shouted as loudly as they could for someone to come let them out, but to no avail.

* * *

Meanwhile, outside the cupboard, the Triplets had found Beckett's phone on the floor, from where Bobby had pushed it off the table. Phil picked it up inspecting it.  
"It's just like mums phone" he proclaimed to the others.  
Bobby snatched it out of Phil's hands, and pressed the home button, making the screen light up with a photo of Castle and Beckett making silly faces. Bobby slid his finger across the screen to unlock the phone. Once the phone was unlocked, it opened onto the recent calls page.  
"Give me that!" said Max snatching it out of Bobby's hands.  
In this process, They accidentally clicked on Esposito's number and called him. All three triplets looked at the dialling phone, and giggled. They then left the phone, where it was, dialling, and ran over to jump on the couch.

* * *

Esposito and Lanie were having a lovely night together. They had gone out to a fancy French restaurant, and now were in the interval of watching Wicked on Broadway. Espo didn't really like watching Broadway shows, but was finding this one particularly interesting, since every time there were boring bits, he and Lanie would kiss. Now that it was interval, Lanie had gone to the bathroom, so he turned his phone on just to check if he had any missed calls from the precinct. As soon as it turned on, it started ringing loudly. It was Beckett, so he figured he should probably answer, and it would be about a body drop or something. He looked around embarrassed at the loud noise it was making, and quickly ducked out of his seat to take the call. He stood outside the theatre and hit answer. At first he couldn't hear anything, and figured it for bad reception, but after he moved around a bit, he heard a smoke alarm going off, and the muffled screams and shouts of Beckett and Castle in the background. He listened for a bit more, and faintly heard Beckett shout  
"let us out of here now!".  
Espo quickly hung up the phone, and went to get Lanie. Once he found her, he told her what he had head, and they both got a taxi over to Castles loft. Once they got there, they rode the elevator up to Castles floor, and ran to his door. They tried the knob, but it wasn't open. Espo put his ear to the door, and heard screams.  
"Stand back" he instructed Lanie, and then he pulled his gun from his waistband, and kicked the large door in.  
Lanie and Espo ran in to the apartment, Espo keeping his gun up for protection from any possible criminals they might run into.  
"Espo! Look!" Lanie drew Espositos attention to what appeared to be blood, all over the floor, and some smeared on the walls.  
Espo swallowed, and he walked further into the apartment, where he found the extremley loud smoke alarm still going, as well as a pot of burning food.  
He was glad that they hadn't been caught in a fire. After the arson case a few weeks ago, where Kevin and himself nearly didn't make it out of a burning building, it would have been a tragedy to lose two of his best friends to a fire.  
Espo reached up and turned the smoke alarm off, while Lanie ran to the stove and switched it off. Once this was done, they went in search of Beckett and Castle. They walked to the table, where some wedding magazines and a bunch of Beckett's work things had been spilled. Espo gathered them up, and noticed that Beckett's gun was missing.  
"Lanie baby, I don't want to alarm you, but Beckett's gun is missing" Espo told Lanie trying to stay calm, for his girlfriends sake. Lanie let out a distraught cry, and tears started running down her face.  
"This is not fair! Beckett and Castle have been through so much, and they're getting married so soon, they can't be dead!" Lanie told Espo vehemently.  
Espo pulled her into a hug.  
"Either way, we need to find them" he told her, and reluctantly she let go of him, and together they went in search around the whole loft.  
They went upstairs and down, in and out of all the bedrooms, and Castles study, and they didn't find him. They didn't see the Triplets either, who had finally fallen asleep on the couch.  
As a last resort Lanie walked up to the hallway storage cupboard and tried the handle, she found it to be locked, but the key was in the lock, so she turned the key. Espo came up behind her forlornly, and watched as she opened the door.  
They both looked into the cupboard hopefully. It was kind of dark, but they didn't see anyone. Suddenly they heard a rustling noise from the bottom of the cupboard. Lanie and Espo looked down to see Castle sitting down sleeping, with Beckett's head in his lap. Castle and Beckett stirred, and looked up at Lanie and Esposito, who were standing outside the closet, with the most puzzled expressions on their faces.  
"Girl, what the hell are you doing?" Lanie asked the half asleep Beckett.  
"Hmmmm, well, we were babysitting, and it was disastrous. Then the kids pushed us into the closet and locked it, then we heard the alarm and tried to get out, but the light blew, and we fel asleep" Beckett said, still sleepily, as Castle started to stand up.  
Espo offered them both of them a hand to get up, and they stood up, and walked out of the closet.  
"So you are saying, that some little kids, managed to get you, a fully trained cop, and you, someone who seems to know everything, they got the better of you?" Espo asked in disbelief.  
"Um yeah" Castle said, more than a little ashamed, as he stretched out "that feels good"  
Beckett who was doing a similar thing, smiled at Espo and Lanie.  
"So, how on earth did you know we were stuck in a closet?" She questioned the pair.  
"the kids that you're babysitting, must have found your phone, and called me. I heard the smoke alarm and your cries of help in the distance, and came straight away" Espo replied.  
"Uh, those little pre-disposed devils" Castle grunted.  
"We had better find them!" Beckett said as if she suddenly realised that she was meant to be taking care of them, so the group of four set off around the loft in search of the naughty triplets. Bobby, Phil, and Max were eventually found sleeping peacefully on the couch. So Beckett decided to leave them there, and attempt to clean up the loft, before Marlene came back, and saw what awful rambunctious activities they had all gotten up to.  
Castle surveyed his loft, it looked like a bomb site. There were cushions and random toys sprawled all over the floor, the walls and floor were covered with lipstick and ketchup, books and magazines had been pushed off the coffee table...all of this made for quite a mess.

* * *

About an hour later, all the mess was finally cleared up. Castle and Beckett thanked Lanie and Espo, for getting them out of the sticky situation, and staying to help clean up, and then the pair left. Just as they left, Marlene wrung the bell on the door, with her husband, Tim in tow. Beckett opened the door with a smile on her face.  
"Marlene, hi! I hope you two had a great night. Castle is just getting the boys now" Beckett told her cousin.  
"Yeah, thanks we had a great night, I hope the boys were all well behaved for you" Marlene said nervously, slightly dreading news of her misbehaving children.  
"Nope, the boys behaved like angels" she smiled at Marlene.  
Castle appeared with the three, now very tired Triplets in tow.  
"Ok, bye now, and thank you so much" Marlene told Castle and Beckett, before herding Bobby, Max and Phil out of the loft and into the elevator. Once they were gone, Beckett shut the door and turned to Castle  
"Never again!" she exclaimed, and Castle laughed  
"I will agree, it was just a little embarrassing, when Lanie and Espo turned up all worried. But lets not think about that now...I do believe we have a Valentines day to celebrate" he told her.  
And with that, he kissed her, and they went upstairs to celebrate together, in true Valentines day style.


End file.
